


Love Me Now

by Grundy



Series: Daughters of Celebrían [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 19:39:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9782300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grundy/pseuds/Grundy
Summary: Mortals, elves, peredhil, love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tried to post this yesterday, but AO3 had other ideas. So it's a little late for Valentine's Day...
> 
> I'm splitting the canon-compliant section into a chapter, and the crossover bits into a separate chapter. (In case some readers would rather skip the crossover parts.)
> 
> The lyrics are the work of John Legend.

_I don't know what's in the stars  
Never heard it from above, the world isn't ours_

He thought when he first saw her that he’d strayed into a dream. Loveliness like her did not exist in the mortal world, and he had not been among the Firstborn before – though even if he had, he would later learn, she was held peerless even among her own people.

She was also a princess, the daughter of the proud king of Doriath, who loved her dearly and did not mean to part with her to a mortal boy, no matter how daring or brave he might be. A jewel from Morgoth’s crown was the bride price he set, and Beren knew it was meant to be impossible. The greatest princes of the Firstborn had failed to do this, so how was a mere Man to compass it?

He laughed all the same. Next to having won the love of the fairest-born woman in all the world, what was stealing from the Dark Lord? Of the two, he held the first to be the more unlikely– and between his Tinuviel or the Silmaril, he knew which was the greater treasure.

It was at her eyes that he looked, not her father’s, when he swore to return with a Silmaril in his hand. And come what may, to that he would hold. He might lack the foresight of her people, but he had the courage of his. Luthien loved him as he loved her, and he could not bear the thought that she should be disappointed.

He can’t promise her happily ever after – not when he knew that his years are nothing compared to all the ages of the world that she will live. An elf and a man should be impossible. Gaining a Silmaril should be impossible. But for her, he will make the impossible happen.

_But I know what's in my heart  
If you ain't mine I'll be torn apart_

She had not understood, when she first saw him, that they were of different kinds, Elf and Man. Until that moment, she had only ever known her own people. The Girdle held the Secondborn at a distance and she had never ventured beyond the reach of her mother’s power, content as she was in her father’s realm.

She knew of the Secondborn, of course. Her cousin Finrod had spoken of them, and she had listened as avidly as any other to his tales of the curious, short-lived Children, much like elves in their form yet so different in their fate. She had not understood her father’s disdain – fear, even – of them.

“Why should Ada fear them so?” she had asked her mother later, when the two of them were alone. “They cannot match us in strength, my cousins say, and their days are little more than those of horses or jewel birds.”

“Your father has foreseen that one of them will one day do him a great harm,” Melian had replied, with a fond smile for her daughter as she brushed out her hair. “Thus your father would have them kept far from us.”

Luthien had frowned.

“Even the Girdle cannot hold back our appointed doom,” she murmured, feeling in her bones even as her mouth shaped the words that she spoke with foresight.

“True, my dearest one,” her mother nodded. “And yet, wise though you are in some ways, you are still young and know nothing of a parent’s love for their child – for it is his father’s heart, not his sensible mind, that Elu allows to rule him in this. You will understand better someday.”

Her mother’s words had puzzled her at the time, for she thought she understood a parent’s love already. She knew her parents loved her deeply.

But when she looked into the eyes of Beren son of Barahir, she felt the full weight of the words she had so casually spoken. For there was wonder in his eyes – but there was also something more, something greater than either of them staring back at her.

He called her Tinuviel, and she heard not only his words, but the Song beneath them. Finally, she understood. This was the harm her father had foreseen – that his only daughter should lose her heart to a mortal man.

But it being done, she trusted that he would surrender to the inevitable. She brought her intended before her parents, certain that grudging though it might be, their blessing would be given to the union. When instead her father set a Silmaril as her bride price, knowing it to be an impossible task, she felt her heart beginning to break. For all his efforts to thwart what he had foreseen, he drew doom ever tighter about them, until she   
felt it strangling as a noose.

She slipped out on a moonless night to find Beren, to aid him. For she knew this much to be true: their joy would not be as her parents’, stretching contented arms out to eternity. It will be ephemeral as the life of an Aftercomer, hard-won and bought with great pain.

But without him, endless though her days might be, there would be only ashes and dust. She is an elf, and her people give their hearts once only. Beren has hers in his keeping, so she has little choice but to follow, to whatever end.

 

_Something inside us  
Knows there's nothing guaranteed_

Ulmo had commanded him to bear a message to the King of the Hidden City, to warn the folk of the Hidden City that their time of grace was nearly at an end. Oddly enough, the Lord of Waters had said nothing about the King’s daughter. It seemed like an obvious oversight, because Tuor couldn’t understand how any man who knew her wouldn’t fall in love with her.

It wasn’t just her beauty, although she certainly had that, with the sunshine hair of her mother’s people and the starlit sea in her eyes. (She tells him with a laugh that she has her father’s eyes. Tuor has to confess that he hasn’t looked anywhere near as closely at Turgon’s eyes as he has at his daughter’s. And probably shouldn’t.) It was beauty of a different kind that ensnared him – her kindness, her intelligence, her unfailing care for her family and her people.

Staying in Gondolin was no hardship when it meant staying in Idril Celebrindal’s company. The only thing that gave him pause was Ulmo’s message, the message he’d been sent to deliver - a warning to Turgon that the time had come to leave Gondolin, for the Hidden City was no longer safe from its enemies. But he reasoned that by staying, he could protect Idril. For as long as he lived, short though that might be to a woman of immortal years, she would come to no harm.

That she could find it in her immortal heart to return the love he bore her – which he had deemed hopeless – would amaze him until his last breath. It humbled him that with so many of her own people about her, handsome, graceful, and ageless, she saw something in him worth casting away the eternity of happiness that should have been her lot in favor of whatever fleeting joy she might glean within mortal days.

When all the forces of darkness came pouring over the mountains, Doom finding Turgon’s people at last, he swore to her that even if it cost his own life, she and their son were going to live – and not as thralls of Morgoth.

And he meant it.

_When we've done all that we could  
To turn darkness into light, turn evil to good_

It was never going to end well. She was a princess of a Noldorin city that would sooner or later fall to the Doom, and he was the herald of its end, a mortal doomed to die. Love should have never entered into the equation.

And yet, somehow it did, slipping in where she had least expected it. For he was brave and true of heart, and accepted with good cheer not only the task laid on him by Ulmo, but the decree of her father that none who knew the way to the Hidden City should leave it again. A lone Man in a city of Eldar, he would be at best a curiosity for the short time allowed him before he passed beyond the circles of the world. If it burdened him, he never let it show. Where she would have expected a dimming, there was only a brightening, as he found delight in the city and its people. Though his coming was as the footsteps of doom, his smiles brightened her darkening days, and his faith renewed her fading hope.

“Have hope, my lady- the sun still rises, so all is not yet lost,” he told her when he found her in a moment of doubt, fearing that her father’s refusal to heed the words of Ulmo meant they would all be destroyed. Her people – her incredible people who survived both the Dark and the Ice – have known enough of pain and loss. Beautiful as Gondolin may be, she would abandon the city without a second thought if that meant safety for its people. “Let us do what we can, while we can.”

She had no good answer for her father when he asked how she could bear to tie herself to a mortal, to accept that love and joy would be her lot for but the blinking of an eye, with all the ages of the world to follow emptier for his absence. For Tuor’s death would not be as her mother’s or the rest of her fallen kin – he would not someday walk living from Mandos, but depart the circles of the world as was the fate of Men. She only knew that if she did not follow her heart and seize her chance at joy, no matter how fleeting, she would live all those ages with her regret.

She had no regrets. Not in Gondolin, where her cousin had been far from the only lord astonished by her choice. Not in Sirion where they had come as refugees, with naught but the clothes on their backs and what they had gleaned from the forests on their trek to the Sea to give their young son. Not even now, on the Sea, on what may yet prove to be a journey that ends in death.

But he still lives, and the sun still rises, so she still has hope.   
 

_Even when we try so hard  
For that perfect kind of love, it could all fall apart_

It’s hard to live up to his parents. Luthien was the fairest born maiden ever to have lived, her mother a Maia, her father an Unbegotten king of the Eldar. Beren son of Barahir had been famed for his feats of daring even before he met her dancing in the forest. Together, they had done the impossible - defeated Gorthaur, cut a jewel from the crown of Belegurth himself, and lived to tell the tale.

Well, sort of. They had also died – and his mother had promptly persuaded Mandos himself to grant them not only an unheard of reprieve from death, but also to allow her to share Beren’s fate. The singers may never tire of the tale.

Compared to that, Dior Eluchil has done absolutely nothing of note. He could claim no brave deeds or noble gestures that will be sung through the ages. He counted himself blessed that Nimloth Galathiliel loved him all the same, and that her parents didn’t expect him to go get another Silmaril or collect all the pearls in the oceans or some similarly impossible task before they allowed them to marry. Nor had they protested when Dior took his bride off to the banks of Andurant, near to Tol Galen.

Heir to Thingol though he might be, Dior felt at peace here in the wild, far from the threat in the North. They were well-hidden from the great Enemy, and close to his parents. He would be perfectly content to live with his darling wife and their daughter and baby sons in the little house near the waterfall forever. But his heart warned him that was not to be, the foresight inherited from his mother whispering that this idyll cannot last.  
So he cherishes his wife and plays with his children and prays to any Balan that cares to listen that they may allow them their bliss for as long as they can.

   
 _Oh I don't know how the years will go down, it's alright  
Let's make the most of every moment tonight_

When Celebrian daughter of Galadriel and Celeborn accepted his suit, Elrond was overjoyed – though it was as well that Celebrian was so attuned to him, for he did not show his joy as much as his surprise. He may be the first husband-to-be in history who immediately asked if his intended had truly thought her answer through.

Celebrian knew that it was not that he did not love her, for he did, beyond words or reason. It was precisely because he loved her that Elrond repeated all the disadvantages to marrying him. The Choice was first and foremost among those, outweighing even the immense responsibility of Vilya and his refusal to accept any royal title – which bothered her not at all, and in truth probably did not bother her mother either, though Elrond believed it did. He did not need to add living in the shadow of the fate of the Noldor, for that is something she has already known all her life.

In that, they are evenly matched, both of mixed parentage, poised between the Noldor and the Sindar, each group ever looking to claim their positives and ascribe any perceived negative to the other side of their heritage. They both played a role in the Last Alliance, though hers will not be sung of as his was, for she had learned much from both her parents and did not need to stand openly upon a battlefield to fight. Her skills were best used preparing for battle. She knows plenty about sizing up disadvantages and assessing risks after all her reconnaissance and scouting work. She also knows how to observe people, adversaries and allies alike.

So she was not surprised that Elrond would point out, again, that while his own fate has long since been decided, his children will also be granted the double-edged choice of the Peredhil should they be born in Middle Earth.

Celebrian simply sighed, and pointed out, again, why his reasoning was somewhat defective – only this time, the summation of her counterargument was phrased less like her mother and more like her father. (In a word, “horseshit”.) She has been waiting on him for several yeni already, and she does not mean to further defer their happiness for however many years, decades, centuries, or millennia it may be until Sauron is defeated utterly.

That their future children may choose the fate of Men will not deter her – she counts it unlikely, but she accepted it as a risk. But she would rather seize what joy there is to be had in Middle Earth while they may. (She does not yet voice her delight that Elrond has moved from ‘child or children’ to ‘children’, for she has ever envied her parents’ tales of childhoods with siblings and cousins and wants that for her own children. Cousins are beyond her power to grant, for she is an only child and both Elrond’s brother and his children were long dead, but siblings…)

She adds only that she feels that the traditional year-long engagement will be quite sufficient in their case, given that Gil-Galad’s greatest frustration at dying in the Last Battle was doubtless that he had not seen their intended union formally announced. When, in a hazy someday on the far side of the Sea, they meet again, she knows his first words to her soon-to-be-husband will be “it took you long enough!”


	2. Chapter 2

_And who's gonna kiss you when I'm gone?  
Oh I'm gonna love you now, like it's all I have_

Elrond knew that something was deeply wrong. 

He had felt a growing sense of unease all the morning, a restlessness such as he had never known. He had been unable to account for it. 

Unlike his wife’s mother, his talents did not extend to osanwë over great distances. While he could sense Celebrían’s growing agitation, she was still too far for him to speak to her with words. He had to trust that whatever was happening, she would soon enough be home to tell him. Unlike her younger days, she did not travel alone – her father made it a practice to send a dozen of his handpicked guard with her through the mountain passes. They should soon reach the point where the guards sent out from Imladris in expectation of their lady’s arrival would be able to escort her home to him. 

He could not shake the disquiet in his mind, though. It was not only his wife he worried for – there was the baby to think of as well. Little Anariel was returning from her first trip to Lothlorien, where he had it on good authority that both her grandparents had shamelessly spoiled the first child in the family to inherit the golden hair of Galadriel’s kin. He tried, and failed, to distract himself with thoughts of how much his youngest daughter would have enjoyed the trip. 

He had just resolved to ride out himself when he felt it – and the suddenness of the blow nearly sent him to the floor. 

_NANETH!_

All three of his older children had screamed in unison, though Arwen was the one who followed her first cry with an equally panicked _ANARIEL!_

Elrond could not think, could not begin to compass the enormity of the loss. With his brother’s death, at least he had known it was coming, and had been braced for the blow of that final severing of the bond between them. But this… He was so disoriented by the sudden void in his fëa where his wife and youngest child should have been that he did not even hear the crash of the door to his study as Erestor came flying in, alarmed at the commotion. 

“What has happened, my lord?”

_Shock_ , Elrond thought, strangely detached. _I am in shock. This is normal for elves who have suffered a sudden loss._

The next moment, denial kicked in. The route between Imladris and Lothlorien was as safe as any road could be. Celebrían knew it well, and would have been even more vigilant than normal with the baby along. They could not _both_ be gone…

“Adar!” 

The twins were pale as they entered, looking still more alarmed to see Erestor helping their father to his chair. Their stricken expressions reminded Elrond that no matter how incapable of anything he felt at the moment, he still had three children to look after. 

He tried to speak, but found no words would come. On the second try, he managed something like speech, but judging by the odd way his sons and advisor regarded him, it must have been less intelligible to their ears than it had sounded to him.

Glorfindel arrived next, supporting Arwen, who was shaking and swathed in blankets, a concerned knot of archivists trailing after her.

“Elrond, what has happened?”

He made his mouth form the words, clear and heavy as stones as they sank into the taut silence.

“Celebrian and the baby are gone.” 

There were gasps and muffled cries from the crowd in the doorway. Erestor said nothing, but his hand on Elrond’s shoulder offered what comfort he could. Glorfindel looked grim.

“I must ride out,” Elrond began, only to be cut off firmly by the returned Balrog slayer.

“You must stay here and look to your daughter,” Glorfindel said firmly, adding more quietly, “you are in no fit state to ride anywhere at the moment.” 

“No, he has to find Anariel,” Arwen insisted.

Elrond closed his eyes against the cruel reality.

“Arwen, my love, she is gone,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around his older daughter. 

“We will go,” Elrohir told his sister and father.

“We will bring them home,” Elladan added. 

They left at once, so quickly that Elrond found it no comfort. He has seen such behavior before, though never in his own sons. Whatever had befallen their mother and sister, he could not lose them as well… and Celebrían would never forgive him if he let their children join her in the Halls.

Glorfindel glanced toward the door and sighed.

“I will go with them, my friend. I can make sure they at least return.”

   
 _And I know it’ll kill me when it’s over_

Arwen wasn’t sure how it had happened. 

She had known Estel practically all his life – while he was not born at Imladris, the news of the birth had come to them not a day later, and he himself had been brought to Imladris even sooner than most of his line, when he was but two. She had first met him as a toddling child, and knew him in the years after that as her littlest sister’s closest companion, before he later became her middle sister’s apprentice in the art of unorthodox fighting. 

She knew of what her sisters called his ‘crush’ on her when he was a youth, newly informed of his name and inheritance, for some years, though she had seldom seen him after he had called her Tinuviel. When she had answered him that though she was not Luthien, her doom might not be unlike hers, she had spoken no words of foresight, only of politeness, seeking to lessen the young adan’s embarrassment.

That she should fall in love with a boy of so few summers when she had known all his fathers since the days of Tarcil defied logic. Yet here they were, walking beneath the mallorn, speaking as lovers, newly pledged to each other, hoping for a future together. And that brought her to a terrible choice, one she had never thought to make.

She had always been elven in both looks and manner. She has heard since her earliest years that she was the likeness of her foremother Luthien come again to Middle Earth. She was also the one who began writing to her kin in the Uttermost West as a young girl, confident that one day she would meet them in Elvenhome. 

Yet even before Estel spoke of it, she knew her decision could no longer be deferred. 

Her options lay before her, stark and unforgiving. 

A single mortal lifetime with Estel, for good or ill, following him beyond the circles of the world in death, Luthien’s daughter in fate as well as face. Or clinging to the destiny she had always expected, following her parents, brothers, and sisters West, where her love would be nothing more than memory, evergreen but empty, her fëa yearning always for its missing piece. 

Was she to sunder herself from her family or her mate?

She listened to Estel tell her that if she would marry him, it was not only the Shadow she would reject, but the Twilight also. 

She turned to the West, unable to let him see the agony of the Choice – for it meant pain either way. There was no guidance to be had, even could her kin answer her in that moment, for the decision was hers and hers alone, and once made, there would be no altering it. She could not have said how long the struggle lasted, and struggle it was, for she felt as though she was being torn in two. 

But finally she knew what she must do, and she felt the acknowledgement she had heard her older brothers speak of, signifying that it was done. 

_Elvenhome. My sisters’ home. My brothers’ home. My parents’ home. But never mine. Namarië._

“I will cleave to you, Dunadan, and turn from the Twilight,” she said quietly, tasting the words on her tongue, both sweet and bitter. “Yet there lies the land of my people, and the long home of all my kin.”

Though she felt the same as she had an hour before, she knew there was a difference – her time was suddenly precious, for it was now measured in mortal years.

 

_I don't wanna think about it_

Celebrian was concerned when, as the reunion feast wound down, her mother indicated to her that her parents desired a private conversation with her and her husband. While private conversations were not unusual, her mother’s expression was grave, her eyes worried.

Galadriel Arafinwiel rarely worried.

Elrond tried to soothe her through their bond, directing feelings of comfort and confidence to her, though she knew he was scarcely less troubled than Celebrian herself, for they both knew there could be but one subject of this conversation – Anariel.

Their middle daughter has been slow to adjust to Middle Earth, still preferring her California name and California ways. Celebrian had been relieved on their arrival in the Golden Wood to hear from her sons that their small sister has not insisted that the Galadhrim address her as Buffy, even if her mortal friends still do. 

She took comfort in her husband’s hand on hers as they climbed the stairs to the talan her parents used as a private sitting room, for she feared what she would hear. Has Anariel made her choice? Surely were that the case, she would have told them sooner?

She was unsurprised to find Anariel already there when she and Elrond reached the talan. That Anariel appeared nervous did not reassure her, and she could feel Elrond’s trepidation rising as well, for this was not the look of a child due a scolding.

“My dear ones,” her mother greeted them, embracing first Celebrian and then Elrond, before both Celeborn did the same.

“Anariel has something important to share with you,” Celeborn said, with a meaningful look at his granddaughter.

From the look on Anariel’s face, it could be quite some time before she worked up the nerve to say it, though Celebrian knew that her daughter rarely lacked for courage.

“Having to do with her choice,” Galadriel prompted gently.

With her grandparents trying so hard to bring her to the point at once, Anariel did manage to speak, though it came out nearly unintelligible.

“Um, I’m an elf,” she mumbled. “Life of the Eldar, going West, all that jazz.”

Elrond was all astonishment, and Celebrian was scarcely less surprised. 

While she had hoped Anariel could be convinced to choose the life of the Eldar, she had expected it would take much persuasion, and that her decision would be made only after one or all of the mortal children had found their way beyond the circles of the world. She was shocked that Anariel had been brought to a choice so soon, and can’t begin to imagine how her parents have managed it.

“All of it, please, my brave one,” Celeborn whispered, an encouraging arm around his granddaughter’s shoulders as he gives his daughter and law-son a look that warns them to brace themselves. “Your father should know.”

“Like, choice made in Sunnydale, and kind of on accident, because I didn’t know it was a choice really,” Anariel elaborated. 

Warned by a seldom felt sensation, Celebrian got a chair underneath her husband just in time, because he was quick to understand what exactly their daughter was trying to tell them without explicitly saying it, and his legs gave out from under him.

_The only way her choice could be made by accident is if she faced death_ , he exclaimed silently. _She rejected the Gift._

Celebrian herself had never known quite what to make of her daughter’s account of having died ‘just for a few minutes’. She had not allowed herself to linger on it. It had never occurred to her that if it was enough to call a new Slayer, it would also be enough to count as her Choice. 

It may be petty, but now that she knew, she was _relieved_. She still doesn’t want her daughter to die. 

Anariel wasn’t done yet, though.

“But what about Xander and Willow and Tara and Anya?” she asked nervously. “They are still mortal, right? Is there any way they can get promoted to elfdom? Tuor did, didn’t he?”

Celebrian could see the desperation in her daughter’s eyes. But that desperation was born of denial, because in her heart Anariel must already know the answer. Celebrian also understood why her mother would defer to her husband in this – save perhaps for the Istari, emissaries of the Valar, none in Middle Earth knew more of the Choice, or the fates of the two kindreds, than Elrond Peredhel.

Elrond’s sigh was heavy, for he too could see that his daughter was hoping against all hope that he would have a better answer for her.

“It does not work like that, my sunshine,” he told her as gently as he could. “They are mortal, and it was explained to them before they came here that we are not. Though it was brave of them to come, and for such bravery I suspect their life will be more as men of Numenor than men of California, no other mortal before or since has been granted the blessing my grandfather was.” 

The devastation in Anariel’s eyes was something Celebrian’s heart ached to see, and she needed no foresight to know that it would not be the last time she would see it. The day might be far off by the reckoning of the mortal children, but it would come all too quickly.

 

_I just wanna love you now_

Tindomiel had never really been bothered by the Peredhel thing. Since she came to Middle Earth, she has known with unshakeable conviction that she was of the Eldar, and that she cannot be persuaded otherwise. 

Unlike her older siblings, her choice is as yet unacknowledged. Her father Elrond has said he expects it will not be until she is of age, for as yet she is considered a child, so unless her choice is forced by death the Valar will wait until she is an adult to accept her decision. (Should her choice be forced by death, she will be telling Namo quite firmly that she is an elf, thank you very much. And in all probability, also adding that she is an elf whose highly aggravated older siblings are waiting for her just over there, and smart money is on Anariel being in a mood to hit things. Buffy had been perfectly willing to take a swing at a hellgoddess, so a Vala probably won’t be exempt from that Slayer smash urge. And Eru and all his ainur help the lord of the dead if Anariel finds a way to take a weapon with her.)

It wasn’t like she didn’t know mortals. Estel’s her best friend in addition to being her not-so-little brother. (She can’t wait until she catches up to him in height. It’s going to happen.) The Scoobies have been part of her life since day one. 

But her family, with the glaring exception of Luthien and Beren, are elves. That alone would be reason enough to choose the fate of the Eldar, even if she had no other reason. She has another, more important reason, though. The Key. She thinks of herself less as the Key than as its guardian, because she’s herself, Tindomiel Elrondiel, not just some cosmic tool. Part of guarding the Key means making sure it can’t be set free by her death. If times ever get dark enough that Imladris is threatened, she’ll be the first one to the Havens. Not because she’s chicken, or because she liked the idea of running away from a fight. But because she couldn’t take the risk. 

The choice had been simple before the Scoobies had kids. She could accept that the Scoobies were mortal, because they’d never known anything else, and neither had she. She might not like to think about it – although she wasn’t nearly as avoidant as Anariel about the subject – but she knew the day would come when they would be parted.

Jesse and Joy, though – it was nothing short of awful to look at them as babies and know even then that they would grow old and die while she would go on and on and on. Tasariel and Califiriel were even worse, because if they died a mortal death, it would be because they chose it. As half-elven, they had the right to decide just as she and her brothers and sisters had. 

It was easy to say she accepted it, and she said it if anyone asked. But in reality, her traitorous half-elven heart hated the idea, and didn’t want to accept it. So she played with them and protected them and loved them as fiercely as she could, because what else was there for her to do?


End file.
